When I started learning Thai Massage in 2009, I took my first nine courses with the Sunshine Massage School in Chiang Mai. Naturally that defined my Thai Massage lineage and much of my style of doing Thai Massage.
This particular lineage — which is rather called Thai Yoga Massage — can be traced back to the Thai Massage teacher Asokananda (Harald Brust) and through him to Ajarn Pichest and Ajarn Chaiyuth, which comes down to a “species” of Northern Thai Style Massage with a relationship to the Old Medicine Hospital in Chiang Mai.
At any rate, in the Sunshine Massage School foundation courses there was a lot of emphasis on “working the Sib Sen Energy Lines” (also called Sip Sen or Sen Sip, etc.). In these courses we would intensively “walk the lines,” mostly by using thumb-acupressure. Strangely enough we would work on all the Energy Lines and their extensions and branches, but we weren’t really taught on which Sen Lines exactly we were pressing.
That is, we rather worked on “Line 1 of the outside lower leg,” “Line three of the inside of the thigh,” or “Line two of the back,” and so on. So, although we learned where all the Sen Lines could be found on the body, we weren’t really trained in the characteristics and therapeutic indications of the individual ten Sen Energy Lines and if, for instance, Line 1 of the outside leg or Line 2 of the back would correspond to this or that Sen Line, etc.
Now, personally, I wanted to know much more about the Sen Lines (especially because everybody claimed them to be the foundation of Thai Massage), and I soon discovered that Asokananda (together with the Thai Massage instructor Kam Thye Chow) had done extensive research about the locations/trajectories and therapeutic indications of the Sib Sen. They had created Sen Line maps (charts) and how the Sib Sen would run across the body.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t find a good book specifically about the Sip Sen. In general, Thai Massage books would just briefly address the Sen Lines, their names, pathways, and function, to then quickly proceed to the practical part of doing Thai Massage. In addition, by doing research myself, I soon found out that each book assumed slightly different names and locations of the Sen Lines, which I found utterly frustrating.
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Anyway, my quest was born, and finally I decided to do in-depth research on all there was to know about the Sen Lines and write a book about it, which I published in April 2020. Today, more than four years later, the book has reached its sixth edition.
In the past years, I’ve added extra background articles, more detailed descriptions of the locations of the Sen main lines, branches and extensions, and I’ve made some corrections and additions to the Sen charts based on research I was doing while writing the Yoga Nadis Energy Channels and Thai Acupressure Points – Face & Head eBooks.
I suppose there’s actually no end to writing about the Sen Sip Lines because it looks like that I keep on discovering new elements, which I of course add to the book. Well, it is what it is, and that’s okay. It will just make for a book that bit by bit becomes better and better.
In any case, if you have any questions with regard to the Thai Sip Sen Lines or about the book, don’t hesitate to write me.
